Top minds convene at Adobe Data Science Symposium

June 11, 2014

On June 5, 2014, 18 professors from top digital marketing universities around the country came to Adobe to learn more about the big advances the company is making in data science. Professors came from schools such as Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, and several others—many to hear for the first time that Adobe has a thriving digital marketing business, rich data assets, and enormous reach with dozens of Fortune 500 companies on its digital marketing customer list.

Adobe’s leaders in digital marketing shared the exciting work the company is doing in the field, and many of the professors presented their work, too.

Babak Shahbaba, associate professor of statistics at the University of California at Irvine, works on statistical methods for big data. He says he came out of curiosity—and, like many of the invited professors, was surprised by what he learned.

“Most of us here didn’t know Adobe was doing this kind of analytical work,” Shahbaba says. “In our field, we are focused on academic pursuits. We talk about how the science can be used, but it’s very interesting to see how the industry is actually using it.”

Anil Kamath, vice president of technology at Adobe, says introducing academia to Adobe’s work in the field will lead to fruitful collaborations for everybody involved.

“We received several invitations for collaborations, requests for presentations, and questions about internships for students,” Anil says. “Based on the success of the symposium, this will become an annual event that will lead to increasing collaboration and exchange of ideas and talent in big data between Adobe and universities.”

Another important part of the day was to share news about Adobe’s new Digital Marketing Research Awards Program, which will provide funding support of up to USD50,000 to academic institutions working in the areas of media optimization, analytics, social, and more.

For more information about the Adobe Digital Marketing Research Awards Program and to participate, click here.